Creating equitable healthcare quality and safety for children with intellectual disability in hospital.
Laurel Mimmo, Susan Woolfenden, Joanne Travaglia and 1 others
PMID 32468634WHAT IT FOUND
Children coded with intellectual disability stayed a median of 87 hours, versus 64 hours for other children, but one third of their admissions lacked the code.
Do not rely on hospital diagnosis codes alone.
Key findings
01In two tertiary children's hospitals, one third of admissions for children identified as having intellectual disability did not have an intellectual disability code.
02Children coded with intellectual disability had a median length of stay of 87 hours, compared with 64 hours for other admitted children.
03Current patient experience measures for children and young people are not suitable for those with moderate or severe learning disability.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
This is a commentary and narrative review, not a controlled study of any therapy or service intervention. The length of stay finding comes from coded hospital records, and one third of admissions for the identified children lacked the intellectual disability code, so the group is likely underestimated. Length of stay is an indirect indicator and cannot separate medical complexity from care quality problems. The paper does not report therapy outcomes, so it cannot show whether these recommendations improve care. Many conclusions rest on the authors' own prior work and proposed models, which have not yet been tested in this article.
Declared interests
The work was supported by Maridulu Budyari Gumal, The Sydney Partnership for Health, Education, Research & Enterprise Translational Research Fellowship Scheme awarded to LM. No other conflicts are stated.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that hospital staff caused longer stays. This is mainly a commentary with one retrospective chart review, the disability codes were incomplete, and length of stay can reflect medical complexity rather than care quality.